11/7/2024

speaker
Gary
CEO

That was the last full year prior to our IPO was 103 million. This is an exciting time for us as we continue to advance toward our frequently discussed goal of reaching $500 million in gross revenue annual run rate within our first five years as a public company. The continuing strength of our markets across all divisions and services resulted in healthy year-over-year growth of net service billings and adjusted EBITDA during the quarter. Interest rates came down for the first time in nearly five years, which re-energized the building infrastructure market. And as we'd hoped would be the case, several large transportation awards that we had been waiting on finally got underway late in the quarter. In July, we effected a change in leadership within operations. We promoted Dan Swayze to the role of chief operating officer, and he's hit the ground running. We expected Mike Brillin to settle into the newly independent position of president, engaging him in oversight of non-day-to-day operations and strategy of the company. Once in the role, however, Mike decided it was not what he wanted, and he elected to retire from Bowman after nearly 30 years with the company. In the interest of both clarity of leadership and timely reassignment of responsibilities, Mike resigned from both his leadership and governance roles immediately upon announcing his retirement. For now, we do not intend to refill or reassign the position of president. The job of leading day-to-day operations is now squarely in Dan's hands, and I'm extremely pleased. He's been right there alongside Bruce and me during the past couple of months as we've implemented staffing adjustments to better align labor and revenue. These efforts have already started paying dividends, as evidenced by the third quarter results. At the same time, we redoubled our commitment to bottom-up forecasting. I'm confident we will remain diligent about proper alignment of labor, accurately forecasting revenue, and continual improvement of performance. Our markets remain healthy, and sales and new work continues to outpace revenue. Year over year, our backlog grew 27%. Since the end of Q2, backlog increased by $28 million, of which approximately one-third was attributable to backlog acquired during the quarter. with a balance coming from a robust bookings of new work, which resulted in a book-to-burn ratio that was well above 1. Okay, with that, I'm going to turn the call over to Bruce to discuss the financial results. Bruce?

speaker
Bruce
CFO

Thanks, Gary. Well, it certainly was an all-hands-on-deck effort during the quarter to refocus and realign our operations to deliver the solid results we released last night. As a quick reminder to everyone, we refer to net service billing and net revenue interchangeably. Net revenue is an industry standard non-GAAP metric that represents the revenue generated by our workforce by eliminating pass-through project expenses from gross revenue. So I'll start with revenue on slide four. Gross revenue in the third quarter was up 21% year-over-year at $113.9 million, with net revenue up 23% to $101 million. Year to date, we've generated $313 million of gross revenue and $281 million of net revenue, which represents year-over-year increases of 24% and 26%, respectively. During the quarter, we implemented targeted staffing adjustments throughout the company to better align our labor with current and forecast revenue. Our gross margin for the quarter, without giving effect to any of these labor adjustments, was 52.4% as compared to 51.6% in the third quarter last year. Year-to-date gross margins has been 51.9% as compared to 51% this time last year. On a sequential basis, as compared to Q2 this year, SG&A was down 140 basis points as a percent of gross revenue at 45.6%. While this is not a destination, it is meaningful progress in our efforts to leverage economies of scale as we grow. On slide five, you'll see the non-cash stock compensation in the quarter was $6.5 million compared to $7.2 million last year. Year-to-date non-cash stock compensation expense is $20.4 million, which includes roughly $1.4 million of expense related to our employee stock purchase plan. We're still projecting roughly $26 million in total stock compensation expense for 2024, which would be 67% of net revenue. Looking ahead, we expect that percentage to drop to around 5% in 2025 and settle in around the 3% to 4% range thereafter. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter increased $1.9 million from last year to just under $17 million, or a 16.7% margin on net revenue. Adjusted EBITDA this quarter included roughly $1.6 million of one-time costs related to the restructuring of labor during the quarter. We believe labor adjustments are now behind us. For the nine months ended September 30th, adjusted EBITDA increased $6.7 million over last year to $42.5 million, which was a 15.1% margin on net revenue. We still believe we can achieve a sustained high-teens margin at scale with optimized labor. Before I talk about revenue in detail, I'll quickly point out a small change in our presentation of the gross revenue by market table. Based on comments we've received relating to the consistency of presentation between current and prior period filings, we're no longer modifying the reported acquired revenue from prior periods. To calculate organic growth, however, we remain consistent in our methodology of considering revenue from acquired companies to be part of the organic base of revenue after four quarters. As detailed in the press release in slide six, 49% of gross revenue for the quarter was from building infrastructure, 19% from transportation, 18% from power and utilities, and 14% from emerging markets. which includes imaging and mapping, water resources, mining, and environmental services. As compared to last year, building infrastructure is down 550 basis points as a percentage of gross revenue, or nearly 10%, with emerging markets increasing nearly 800 basis points, or more than doubling. This is in large part due to the acquisition of Surdex, but it's also from other gains in water and environmental services. The distribution of net revenue by vertical was roughly the same. During the third quarter, gross revenue from acquired companies was $23.3 million, and net revenue was $20.4 million, or roughly 20% of gross and net revenue. This quarter, acquisition revenue included Excellence, Dennis, CFA, Blankenship, High Mesa, S. Roundtree, TCE, Moore, Spieth Lewis, Certix, Element, Roballon FCS. At year end, acquisitions we made in Q4 of 2023, meaning excellence through Hess Roundtree, will fall off the acquired revenue list. Turning to slide seven, on a trailing four-quarter basis, organic growth of net revenue at the end of the third quarter was approximately 8.3% as compared to total net revenue for the trailing four quarters at the end of the third quarter last year, during which all net revenue was included in the organic basis. Mike Nygren, Organic growth of net revenue during that period was most significant in emerging markets at 63% with transportation next at 17% followed by power utilities at 14% and building infrastructure at 1%. Mike Nygren, Nominally transportation was the largest contributor, followed by power and utilities emerging markets and building infrastructure. Mike Nygren, This trailing four quarters view of organic growth is a little different than we've presented in the past. Given the volatility created by the inconsistent timing and frequency of acquisitions between quarters, we feel this presentation of trailing four-quarter growth offers a better perspective for understanding growth trends. For the nine months ended September 30, gross revenue from acquired companies was $49.8 million, and net revenue was $45.1 million, or roughly 16% of both gross and net revenue. Organic growth of net revenue for the nine months was approximately 5.6%, as compared to the same nine-month period last year, where all net revenue was likewise considered organic. Again, the largest percentage growth was emerging markets at 48%, followed by transportation at 14%, power utilities at 6.2%, and building infrastructure at just under 1%. Again, transportation contributed the largest nominal growth. We believe that organic growth from building infrastructure will continue to rebound into 2025, while growth from emerging markets will moderate a little bit now that the starting basis is higher. Turning to slide eight, our balance sheet is as healthy as it's been, with roughly 12 million of cash on hand, low leverage, and plenty of capital available. Our line of credit is close to $70 million available, and our equipment financing capacity is sufficient to cover CapEx through 2025. Net debt on September 30 was roughly $85 million, which represents a leverage ratio of 1.6 times trailing four quarters adjusted EBITDA and approximately 1.2 times forward four quarters of adjusted EBITDA. Cash flow from operations for the nine months was up $5.5 million sequentially from June 30 at the $11 million, with $44 million year-to-date cash flow from operations before a $33 million use of cash from changes in working capital. With respect to cash and liquidity, interestingly, in October we found ourselves unexpectedly back in the position of having the opportunity to file our 2023 returns in accordance with the R&D position we'd adopted for our 22 returns. As it turned out, definitive guidance the IRS was expected to have released prior to October had not been issued as we approached filing our returns. This allowed our tax advisors and us at Pricewaterhouse to reach a reasonable basis position for continued R&D expense deductibility enabled us to file without remitting the approximately $12 million payment we expected to make and without accruing for penalties. So that $12 million will stay with us for now. And since the filing was deemed to be a reportable subsequent event, you will see further disclosure about the return of the UTP and the 10-Q. During the quarter, We used our capital to buy back just about 500,000 shares of common stock under our $25 million authorization at an average price of approximately $23.89 per share. This does not include shares of Treasury stock purchased to cover taxes associated with stock vesting. On September 30th, we had 17.7 million shares outstanding. We've continued to repurchase shares under the authorization since the end of the quarter, And as of today, we have approximately 17.5 million shares outstanding. You'll see on slide nine that at the end of the quarter, we had gross backlog of 380 million, which is $81 million more than the end of Q3 2023, and as Gary said, over 28 million more than June 30th. While approximately 10 million of the sequential increase over the last quarter was a result of acquired backlog, the balance was derived from new orders. The distribution of backlog is slightly overweighted to transportation relative to revenue in the third quarter. Given the nature of our sales cycle and the generally longer-term nature of transportation projects, I would not read much into that mismatch. Turning to slide 10, in the release yesterday, we increased our 2024 net revenue outlook to accommodate the revenue we'll pick up from the recent ExelTech acquisition and reaffirmed adjusted EBITDA, which would not have breached the rounding threshold if we added it. We also introduced a net revenue outlook for 2025 of $422 to $437 million, which represents organic growth of net revenue between 5 and 9% based on pro forma full-year 2024 net revenue adjusted for partial-year acquisitions as the basis. For our outlook for 2025 adjusted EBITDA, we're projecting a 16 to 17% margin on net revenue with a range of $68 to $75 million. As always, that excludes future acquisitions not closed as of today. As evidenced by the more than 30% reduction to our equity value in response to last quarter's roughly 4% reduction to revenue guidance and roughly 8% reduction to adjusted EBITDA guidance, the message is clear that there's no benefit to stretching with respect to 2025 guidance at this time. As such, we will revisit our outlook in connection with our quarterly and year-end reports throughout 2025. We're hopeful that this quarter demonstrates to the market that Bowman is not damaged and our equity is meaningfully undervalued at current multiples as compared to our peers and other comparable transactions we see in the marketplace for firms our size. Before I go, I'll quickly mention that I'll be at the Bayer Conference in Chicago next week, the Craig Hallam Conference in New York, and others throughout the remainder of the year and into next year. Check our investor website to see a calendar of where we'll be presenting and meeting investors in person. Gary?

speaker
Gary
CEO

Okay, thank you, Bruce. Last week, we announced the acquisition of Washington State-based Exel Tech Consulting. It's a well-established 35-year-old engineering, design, and program management firm. They have extensive bridge design, structural engineering, transportation planning, and environmental sciences capabilities. Geographically, this acquisition complements our July acquisition of Washington-based FCS Group. which is a professional services firm focused on rate and financial consulting for the utility and renewable energy industries. The acquisition of ExelTech fits right into our strategic objectives by fueling the growth of our national transportation practice and expanding the breadth of associated offerings. The fact that ExelTech and FCS are in close proximity to each other provides Bowman with an immediate combination of regional expertise, established customer relationships, and expansion of our operational footprint to the Pacific Northwest and beyond. From a macro perspective, the first Fed rate cut in several years has energized real estate markets. However, uncertainty around the pace of future rate cuts and the landscape of regulatory and economic policy is having a sort of paralyzing effect on this market. Good news for us. David Miller- Is a planning and engineering and the first steps and preparing for project starts and restarts and we see a notable uptick in market activity and real estate related markets, particularly in multifamily markets such as bill for rent and apartments. David Miller- Okay, turning to slide 11 David Miller- Several of the transportation award starts that were delayed over the first part of the year finally got underway in the latter part of the third quarter. David Miller- Notable among these is the Illinois David Stahlman- Do ti 55 corridor rehabilitation project where we're providing multi year management and design services for a 16 mile section of the highway. David Stahlman- Others included design build project for the Virginia dot and a comprehensive roadway improvement project for us right one in Philadelphia. David Stahlman- Large third quarter transportation wins now making their way through contracting include a $10 million award with Cook County, Illinois. And furthermore, we fully expect activity relating to the Allegheny Tunnel bypass project for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority to increase through the end of the year. In our developing ports and harbors practice, which we now group with transportation, we were awarded several million dollars in contracts to be delivered in 2025 from both longstanding and new customers. Our new port asset conditions kit is an innovative proprietary delivery platform that we've developed for marine facility operators We've got high hopes for its prospects moving forward. Coastal and resiliency engineering combined with high altitude aerial surveying has enhanced our ability to pursue public and private sector customers in the aftermath of ever more frequent and ferocious natural disasters. Another aspect of our ports and harbors expansion includes enhanced waterfront capabilities, which have been leveraged by our traditional development practice leaders to pursue urban waterfront redevelopment and coastal shore protection opportunities in areas including Kentucky, South Carolina, and Maine. Also, we're expanding our focus to inland recreational marinas and boating facilities in areas such as Pittsburgh, Charleston, Savannah, Philadelphia, Houston, and others. On other fronts, we recently contracted to immediately start work at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. The scope of this work includes comprehensive survey services for a new 10,000-foot runway. Additionally, we rewarded our fifth ongoing on-call agreement with Southwest Gas, expanding our service area into western and northern Nevada and California. Revenue in our MEP group is trending upwards with strength in commissioning services, and in the power markets, we're seeing an uptick in electrification and decarbonization assessments as the industry moves more toward net zero and all-electric solutions. Acquisitions continue to have a positive long and short-term impact on the organic growth of the business. A notable example is our growing fire protection engineering practice, which came from the Fisher acquisition. Our contract for surveying hazardous material storage facilities for Marine Corps bases in the US and Japan was recently expanded by an additional 21 sites. Over the course of our nearly 30 years in business, organic growth has always been a central focus of our approach to growth and expansion. Our long-term track record of a robust organic growth is a result of culture, attitude, risk tolerance, and an eye for good markets. These attributes can characterize us still today. Our recent inclusion as an ENR top 150 global design firm puts us in good company among industry elites and works to solidify our brand as a premier provider of comprehensive engineering and design solutions. Going into 2025, I expect that we'll continue to be acquisitive likely with larger average revenue size and a bit less frequent than we've been over the past several years. We'll continue to focus on adjacent businesses and attractive markets that we can readily integrate and grow significantly over time. While private equity continues to play an ever more active role in the industry, paying outsized multiples for larger firms, we're confident that our culture and approach will continue to make us competitive and successful in our M&A activities. Our strategy is working. Clearly, we stumbled last quarter in terms of forecasting, but we've recovered our firm footing and are poised to deliver on our commitments during the remainder of the year and into 2025. Our efforts toward diversification, integration, leadership transition, and process excellence have positioned us to grow organically, expand our services, make acquisitions that broaden our footprint while deepening our customer relationships and wallet share, and most importantly, deliver long-term profitability cash flow conversion, and value creation for our shareholders. With that, I'll now turn the call back to the operator for questions and answers.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We will now begin the QA session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause here briefly to allow questions to generate in queue. The first question comes from the line of Jeff Martin with Rock Capital Partners. Please proceed.

speaker
Jeff Martin
Analyst, Rock Capital Partners

Thanks. Good morning, Gary and Bruce. I hope you're doing well. Good to see the efforts put into the quarter starting to show through. I guess first question, are we done with the internal changes? Are we heading in, did you head into the fourth quarter with a clean slate? And if not, what remains to be done?

speaker
Gary
CEO

Clean slate, yes. It's always a journey, but over the third quarter, the changes we've made, we consider that a, we reached our destination there. We're ever diligent and deliberate in keeping an eye on that. So it's something that always evolves, but done deal.

speaker
Jeff Martin
Analyst, Rock Capital Partners

Good to hear that. Okay. And then with respect to your updated 2025 guidance, what level of organic growth are you assuming for that year? And if you're assuming any different equation in that organic growth relative to what you had previously assumed, maybe help detail that for us.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

Yeah, Jeff, midpoint of that's probably around 7% organic growth for next year. Again, coming out of the shoot conservative on that. It's basically looking at this year as adjusted for acquisitions at the base growing forward. I don't know that there's any significant shifts in strategy related to next year other than continuing focus on these markets that we're in.

speaker
Jeff Martin
Analyst, Rock Capital Partners

Great. And then the last one for me, you mentioned moving up the size of M&A deals going forward. Could you help maybe give us some relative perspective on how much you plan to move up? And then I guess the second part to that question, I would be curious to get an update on how the CertX acquisition is performing since that is one of your largest acquisitions to date?

speaker
Gary
CEO

Right. The, I'll say it's an evolution in our M&A strategy. Really, it's a recognition as we're getting larger and larger, it takes the larger deals to move the needle. So, we don't have any real, we don't have a target size, but just in, as strategy, get larger and the larger they get, by definition, almost a little less frequent. As far as CertX, we're pleased so far. We're seeing lots of cross-selling and revenue synergy, and it's moving along fine.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

Jeff, we've averaged sub-10 this year in our acquisitions, and sort of setting a goal to get that into double digits next year. You think about the number of acquisitions, and we talk about that in terms of revenues. but revenue bonds, Certix was an outlier in that. So kind of putting that aside, I think doing things more in the sort of, let's call it the recent Excel tech, which is closer in that, you know, the FCS is this, the Excel tech's closer to the 10s, as opposed to the smaller ones that we see in the TCEs and the elements and species that were earlier in the year and try to cut a couple turns in terms of number of acquisitions out, but still continue to increase the amount of revenue bought. Very helpful.

speaker
Jeff Martin
Analyst, Rock Capital Partners

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Aaron Spichella with Craig Holland. Please proceed.

speaker
Aaron Spichella
Analyst, Craig Holland

Yeah. Good morning, Gary and Bruce. Thanks for taking the questions. Morning. So maybe first on transportation, you know, good to see some of those awards. come in there, you know, I know that's been a big focus for you. Can you just talk about how that pipeline looks there, you know, continuing to expand to more DOTs and, you know, starting to see that IIJA funding come out here in the back half of the year?

speaker
Gary
CEO

We are seeing the pipeline continuing to expand and in several of our acquisitions, like we mentioned on the call, XL Tech. So it's a big focus of our inorganic growth strategy. But the acquisition several years ago of McMahon and our Chicago operations, they're seeing some good, robust, and large transportation projects.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

Gary, you'll see we're focused on DOTs, certainly. That's kind of like, let's call that a depth, but there's also a breadth. And breadth being things like adding bridge engineering, bridge design, and that sort of structural element of transportation engineering. to try to expand how many things we can do for an ever-growing base of clients. We've already started, and we mentioned, we've already started working with XL Tech in advance of the acquisition, and they're already teaming with them on projects where their skill set brings additional capabilities and opportunities to groups that are better entrenched with larger transportation departments than they would have been nationally. but with an additional scope of services.

speaker
Gary
CEO

We're in early innings with CERDX, but CERDX was not able to serve big transportation markets prior to joining us, and now with our broad clientele, we're looking into actively marketing state DOTs for aerial survey work that CERDX brings.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

It's one of those that it kind of has a bit of momentum. It's an accelerator. You get one, two, three, five, 20 DOTs. Now the next 10 of them are easier to get than the first 10 to 20.

speaker
Aaron Spichella
Analyst, Craig Holland

No, that's really helpful, Culler. Thanks. And then just second for me, can you just maybe some early reads or thoughts just on the election and what that might mean for your business here moving forward?

speaker
Gary
CEO

Certainly, speaking of early innings, we're barely up to the plate on assessing that. We think, if anything, it'll be positive for our business. We have a presence in fossil fuels and oil and gas. We think the change in the regulatory environment will make that a more robust market. We're looking forward to that. We fully anticipate that the infrastructure uh spending is is the die is cast on that so we're quite confident that we won't see any adverse effect on that um some analysts feel that that that the new administration may move to some more privatization of infrastructure so we're already thinking how we focus on marketing to our uh PPP developer clients. And in the mining, the lack of the change in a regulatory environment probably increased mining. We're cautiously optimistic on the renewables. There's a lot of thought that the renewables, the IRA has created so much economic activity in red states that it hopefully will stay in effect. If a different party, the other party, had won the election, we'd probably be more apt to double down on our renewables. But we're fully confident that our presence in renewables will continue to be a robust part of what we do.

speaker
Aaron Spichella
Analyst, Craig Holland

All right. Thanks for taking the questions. I'll turn it over. Thank you, Aaron.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Andy J. Whitman with Baird. Please proceed.

speaker
Andy J. Whitman
Analyst, Baird

Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I guess I just wanted to ask a little bit more about the early look here at 2025. And specifically, if you looked at your backlog today, how does it compare to like historical levels in terms of the amount of that 2025 work that you're guiding to that's covered. Is it more? Is it less? And can you also just comment about the level of permitting and notices to receive that you've received on this work? Just, you know, comes out of last quarter where some of those delays were some of the reasons for the shortfall. So I just wanted to get your confidence that the permitting and the things that are needed to get to work are in place for this 25 outlook.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

So, Andy, I would say that the backlog is relatively characteristically similar, maybe a little bit more beneficially stacked for next year, only because of some of these timing issues we've had in the last couple of quarters and a half or so. There's a little bit of more ready to go kind of stuff that might hit a little quicker. But I'd say, generally speaking, we The backlog is similar in nature. It's bigger, obviously, you know, than it's been, but relative to what we forecast for next year, you know, I think it's characteristically aligned. In terms of permitting, we don't anticipate any real hurdles with that.

speaker
Andy J. Whitman
Analyst, Baird

Okay. That's helpful. um just maybe a couple of clarifications here then uh it looks like the uh the one-time cost associated with um the staffing adjustments was that it looks like there's the in the other line for your adjusted EBITDA bridge uh is more than a little bit than it has been historically is it is it in there and added backwards yeah okay and then uh I'm sorry just on the on the um TAB, Mark McIntyre, In your script the comments on the changes related to the calculation of organic growth gives me. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Can you just go through that one more time. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Just so I can. TAB, Mark McIntyre, yeah when we got it understood what you're doing yeah now.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

TAB, Mark McIntyre, For the quarter for the for the quarter for looking at third quarter we we looked at a trailing for quarter. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Organic growth rate using the same methodology we've used it in terms of. of anything that is more than four quarters prior was in the organic base from which we were growing. Anything that was acquired in the last four quarters is eliminated from the total net revenue used to calculate the growth on top of that. In terms of the year to date, it's the same as it's been.

speaker
Andy J. Whitman
Analyst, Baird

You're saying that the 8% organic NSR growth that you highlighted in your release is based on a four-quarter result that's reported for this quarter? Did I understand that correctly? Trailing four quarters.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

Trailing four quarters from third quarter. So it would be fourth through third, and then fourth 22 to third 23 versus fourth 23 to third 24.

speaker
Andy J. Whitman
Analyst, Baird

with everything from prior year being reassigned. Got it. Okay, I'm going to try this maybe a couple different ways. What would the calculation have been under the old methodology for the third quarter?

speaker
Bruce
CFO

So the third quarter indiscreetly would have been about flat because of the timing of acquisitions in the previous year. Q, singular Q over singular Q was more flat.

speaker
Andy J. Whitman
Analyst, Baird

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's how I was trying to understand. Okay. That makes more sense. Okay. So then just in terms of the M&A pace, I'm just, I'm kind of curious, did the organizational changes in the quarter at all impact the deal flow that you're able to execute or were they kind of mutually exclusive? actions for the company during the quarter.

speaker
Gary
CEO

The organizational changes didn't adversely affect our ability to do deals and a pace of deals. I'll call it our machine is still in place.

speaker
Andy J. Whitman
Analyst, Baird

Got it. Okay. I think that's all my questions for today. Thanks.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Britt Dillman with D8 Davidson and Company. Please proceed.

speaker
Britt Dillman
Analyst, D.A. Davidson & Co.

Great. Thanks. A question around the margin expansion applied in 2025. What are the levers you're going to be able to pull to support that, just thinking about that in context of what we've seen in 2024 thus far? Is it an official contract mix? the margin expansion implied in 2025? I mean, what are the levers you're going to be able to pull to support that?

speaker
Bruce
CFO

So we think that we are, again, continuing to improve our economies of scale. We think that we are, as we're growing the top line, we're starting to be able to better meter the overhead costs associated with the revenue. Like some of the I don't know that I would say it's built into the contract rates. We certainly are seeing some improvement in, I think, some of the multipliers that we think we can be getting on some of these projects marginally, and that's all it takes is marginal improvement.

speaker
Gary
CEO

A continued focus on operational excellence. That's a lever that's always to be pushed, and it's one that renewed focus on that.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

When we look at this quarter, we're in the range of that.

speaker
Britt Dillman
Analyst, D.A. Davidson & Co.

Right. So the expectation, and especially with some of the things you've been doing here internally in the last three or more than that month, is that you should be able to outgrow your SG&A.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

Yeah, we think we can squeeze a little bit more out of labor. TAB, Mark McIntyre, You know the relationship of you know with Labor Labor multiple of revenue multiple labor and sg and a and again I think you know this quarter we're in we're in the range of where we want to be for the whole year next year.

speaker
Britt Dillman
Analyst, D.A. Davidson & Co.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, Right. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Okay, and then I guess just on building infrastructure, maybe just sort of the residential exposure state of affairs. You know, some companies talking about, you know, sort of slower trends as of late. I know you're not really directly tied to the starts per se, but is that area of your business stable for you? It sounds like maybe you're anticipating it to re-accelerate based on conversations you're having. Just be curious if you could talk around that.

speaker
Gary
CEO

Yes, it's stable and not to, not to, not to, Not to quote what you just said, but we are, based on conversations, based on level of activity, on proposal activity, we do see new energy being injected into that going into 2025. Thank you.

speaker
Andy J. Whitman
Analyst, Baird

Thanks, Brent.

speaker
Aaron Spichella
Analyst, Craig Holland

Thanks, Brent.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Alex Regal with B Reilly. Please proceed.

speaker
Alex Regal
Analyst, B. Riley

Good morning, gentlemen. A couple quick questions here. First, stock-based comp declining. Hey, Gary. First, stock-based comp declining as a percentage of revenue. Is this a change in compensation strategy? Is it a swap into more cash comp? Can you talk about that comment a little bit more?

speaker
Bruce
CFO

I think it's a combination of a couple things. Yes, it is metering of the utilization of stock as compensation, you know, looking ahead. There is the burn off of old grants that, you know, that burned off now from pre-IPO days. It has to do with, yes, there may be some shift towards more cash-based compensation. uh, I don't know that it is an increase in overall compensation, but, um, a shifting of, of paradigm there a bit and just growing into, uh, you know, the level of, of, of, uh, having revenue grow at a pay, you know, such that it, it absorbs from a percentage basis more of that stock count.

speaker
Alex Regal
Analyst, B. Riley

That is helpful. And then, um, Two questions as it relates to some of your end markets. First, any update on the data center market and, in particular, these really large AI data centers? And then secondly, if you can provide any comments on whether or not you're seeing multifamily opportunities re-accelerate?

speaker
Gary
CEO

On the data centers, the activity is robust. We continue to grow our presence in that market. Right now, it's outside of the building, almost, you know, we just, civil engineering and for the site engineering. We are looking at opportunities, looking into next year, some opportunities to get inside the building with the mechanical and electrical facilities. On the residential, on the multifamily, yes, we are. We are seeing some significant movement in multifamily, like say as far as proposals, level of interest from the market. So we have a high degree of optimism that we'll see some acceleration in the multifamily activity next year.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

Yeah, Alex, the data center market constraint today is the power, not the land. And so in a lot of ways, things are bleeding across a couple of different sectors for us. So I think there is activity we see in the capacity side of power to provide for what is an ever-increasing demand for the physical data center locations. He's certainly reading about how folks are starting very preliminarily to look at SMRs as power sources for data centers. So it's coming at us from two different directions. And one thing that we're

speaker
Gary
CEO

Tom Frantz, You're seeing hearing from from in the data center market the Ai data centers they they're not so. Tom Frantz, used this term I think it's right sensitive to latency so there's a lot more flexibility where to where day Ai data centers can be located. Tom Frantz, As far as proximity to the to the to the fiber corridors so that just add opens up more opportunities for us with our geographic dispersion. to do data center work in areas that we weren't doing it before.

speaker
Bruce
CFO

We do get a lot of inquiries, I'm told, from landowners thinking about rezonings or reuse applications to change over. Hey, can I be a data center? Everybody now who's got a couple acres wants to be a data center.

speaker
Alex Regal
Analyst, B. Riley

Very helpful. Thank you very much. Thanks, Alex.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. Again, to ask a question, please press star one. We will pause here briefly to allow questions to generate. There are no additional questions left at this time. I will hand it back to Gary for closing remarks.

speaker
Gary
CEO

T. Thank you, Tia. Just I'll close by thanking everybody for participating this morning. Thank you to those who are part of Bowman for all the hard work done, all the good work over this quarter. Certainly to our investors and stockholders, thank you for the faith you put into us. And we're quite pleased with Q3 and quite pleased with our progress in and continue to evolve this company and reach our growth goals. With that, we'll wrap it up for the morning. Thank you, everyone.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you. You may now disconnect your line.

Disclaimer

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